THE `MORAL TALE' IS OFTEN THE FURTHEST FROM THE TRUTH OF LIFE

Author: By Katherine A. Powers

Date: SUNDAY, February 15, 1998

Page: E2

Section: Books

Why do I like this book so much? Well, for one thing, because of what tires some people out: all the quotidian detail. The price of coal, potatoes, steak, a hat, a pair of gloves; the look of rooms, their furnishings, and of life in the street, in stores, and in factories; and all the descriptions of work and domestic arrangements. This is reality.

But the main hold the novel has over me comes from Dreiser's portrayal of the self formed by circumstance, by those very same quotidian details, and of the shallow roots of action, of temporizing, of failure of nerve, and of the consequences of deeds done, and not done, haphazardly but with fatal effect. It is the way most of life really is: the easeful, self-forgiving, unalert part. It is a measure of Dreiser's genius that one can shrug off his pompous chapter titles, the eruptions of ormolu prose, and the novel's ramshackle structure and find it compelling and true.

Just think of Hurstwood! A man who mistakes his comfortable circumstances for his essential nature, then backs into an act that is hardly an act at all, but is irreparable all the same. And there he is later, passivity rampant, money steadily and fatally dwindling, hunkered down, reading, reading, reading, every word in his daily newspapers, ``rocking in the warm room near the radiator and waiting for dinner to be served.'' This makes me quake for the pity of it and marvel at Dreiser's rendering of spiritual collapse, of the dissolution of a man picking up speed on the downward trajectory of life.

Dreiser's aim was, as his champion Mencken put it, to ``make the novel true,'' to show, in other words, what is, not what ought to be. The fact is, conventional virtue does not necessarily triumph, nor is its opposite brought low; energetic desire, if anything, is what propels the successful person, in Dreiser's view. But this is the furthest thing from flabby proto-New-Age optimism. Dreiser was a pessimist through and through, believing that disillusion is our inevitable portion. His vision was intolerable to the majority of critics of his time: ``The critical schoolmarms'' wrote Mencken, ``fell upon him with alarmed, falsetto objurgations the instant he appeared over the rim of the prairie, and soon he was the storm center of a battle royal.''

The prairie in question was Indiana, a place that suddenly and inexplicably has loomed large in my reading. I recently finished James H. Jones's ``Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life'' (Norton, $39.95), which despite its inelegant title is the best biography -- and the longest, at 937 pages -- I have read in over a year. Kinsey, who began his research into human sexual behavior at the University of Indiana, was, in own his way, opposed to the sleight of hand that substitutes moral would-be's for empirical fact. On the other hand, as Jones so brilliantly shows, Kinsey was far from objective; he was a fervent crusader for a view of sexual behavior that endorsed his own desires.

I think there is something odd about how this fine biography, this immense work of research and astute judgment, which was published only three months ago, has disappeared from view so quickly. The reviews I read of it squirmed and sidled around, suggesting that Kinsey was a pathbreaker, a voice of reason in a field where superstition, prejudice, and outmoded morality reigned, and that we owe our present enlightened views on sexuality to him. On the other hand, it was acknowledged that he did engage in some unlovely behavior and his research methods were dubious and . . . unfortunate, but still, you know, well, he was on the right side. The irrelevance of this, the sheer meagerness of it, given the attitude and nuance of

Jones's examination of Kinsey's character and motivation, not to mention his attention to the role played by institutions in Kinsey's campaign, is as stupendous as it is pervasive.

This is a biography that explores the intersection of culture and individual in all its complexity. Anyone looking for a moral tale of the modern sort, one that identifies toleration with disinterested reason, in which motives are pure and the champions of progress are selfless -- anyone, that is, looking for today's version of inspiration and uplift -- will be mighty confused by this book, one which finds and explores contradictions at every level.

Jones shows how Kinsey's repressed upbringing and his horror at his own homosexuality left him guilt-ridden and self-loathing, a frame of mind that he translated into gruesome masochistic practices on one hand and a passion to change the world on the other. Then, though he was a scientist by training and temperament, he used the collection of sexual histories as a means of domination and control. Furthermore, he drew his data from sources -- the stews of big cities and the reports of pedophiles, for instance -- that would certainly produce skewed results. Again, he claimed to believe that sex should be free, and yet insisted that his colleagues ask his permission before embarking on affairs with each other. And he was, finally, the great espouser of openness who lived a secret life.

Jones's biography of this tormented man is a triumph of true impartiality and sympathetic understanding. Kinsey's ``great accomplishment,'' he writes, ``was to take his pain and suffering and use it to transform himself into an instrument of social reform, a secular evangelist who proclaimed a new sensibility about human sexuality.'' In showing this and at the same time chronicling Kinsey's high-handed methods and his not completely scientific goals, Jones, the author of ``Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment'' (Free Press, $14.95), makes another substantial contribution to the vexed history of science and ethics in this country.